14 Memory-Boosting Neurobic Exercises Backed by Brain Science

Have you done any CrossFit training for your brain and memory lately? If not, it’s time that you discovered neurobics.

Why bother?

For one thing, neurobics provides mental exercise that does more than just improve memory.

Neurobic exercises also sharpen your focus.

They help rebuild your brain’s internal navigation system.

And that means you have stronger cognitive maps, providing you with countless benefits in life.

I’m talking about everything from remembering directions better to enjoying heightened creativity.

Bookmark this page and come back often for fresh and effective exercises that boost your brain and memory.

And when you’re ready to get started, let’s dive in.

What Are Neurobic Exercises?

As scientists have noted, the term “neurobic exercise” was coined by Dr. Lawrence Katz.

He was part of a scientific trend that ultimately disproved the idea that the brain can’t regenerate dead brain cells or grown new ones.

Not only are we able to grow new brain cells through neurogenesis, it’s possible to substantially “rewire” the brain thanks to neuroplasticity.

Neurobics are mental activities and cognitive exercises that help you do both.

They create these regenerative effects because they stimulate the brain, prevent memory loss, and improve memory recall. 

Just as physical exercise stimulates the muscles, so the muscle of the brain is stimulated with neurobic exercise.

Now that we have our definition in hand, here are my favorite routines.

14 Neurobic Exercises to Boost Memory and Brain Health

Our brains are tailored towards efficiency, which is beneficial when we encounter a problem or new activity. We automatically problem solve, which is amazing, but these “same old, same old” routines do nothing for mental development.

That’s why my favorite neurobic forces your brain to do familiar tasks in completely alien ways.

1. Write with Your Non-Dominant Hand for Cognitive Gains

Want a simple way to experience how your brain runs on auto-pilot?

Start noticing how quickly you can write with your dominant hand.

Unless you’re ambidextrous, you rarely give writing any thought. And that’s the point.

Writing with your non-dominant hand for just a few minute a day will exercise your cognitive sharpness because it causes you to pause and think about the activity you are engaged in.

What should you write?

I suggest using your non-dominant hand to keep a memory journal or perform daily gratitude journaling.

Even just writing your to-do list in this way will give your brain a boost. I’ve been doing it for years and the results are fantastic.

Don’t worry if your non-dominant hand writing is sloppy at first. With practice your penmanship will improve.

Focus instead on the goal of giving different parts of your brain a solid workout.

This exercise promotes cognitive enrichment in another way. As you focus on the content of your journaling, your life will feel more meaningful.

You’ll also generate better ideas that help you create more impact. And because you’re activating more of your brain, this makes your thoughts much more likely to be translated into action.

2. Non-Dominant Hand Music Exercises

If you are a musician, you already have a built-in system for brain training. Though you can also use singing or recitation as I’ll demonstrate in a minute.

Here’s what I mean by challenging your brain through your hands:

If you play piano, cross your body by playing the bass notes with your right hand and the higher notes with your left. This will not only improve your musical intelligence, but provides incredible brain training.

If you don’t play any instrument, you can get a similar effect by singing or reciting something you’ve memorized while you juggle.

Here’s a video where I demonstrate doing exactly this kind of neurobic exercise:

3. Playing card non-dominant exercises

If music’s not your bag, perhaps you can experiment with cardistry or sleight of hand.

I practice both myself to workout my brain through what scientists call interhemispheric communication.

Here’s a video where I show myself essentially juggling with playing cards on the streets of Berlin:

To get started all you need is a deck of playing cards.

Then:

• Dedicate 10-15 minutes daily practice cardistry
• Focus on the sensations and movements as you practice
• Make the challenges progressively difficult by adding more cognitively challenging sequences over time

Adding some cardistry to your daily routine will not only diversity your skill set, but also contribute to your cognitive health.

You can also learn to memorize playing cards for even more of a mental workout.

4. Neurobic Exercises that Use Your Mouth

The authors of Keep Your Brain Alive point out that “the tongue and lips are among the most sensitive parts of the body, even more sensitive than the fingertips.”

That’s why including your mouth in your neurobic routines is highly effective.

Singing or whistling are great neurobic exercises, especially as you continually learn new melodies and musical phrases.

Want even more of a workout?

Learning to speak a new language will give your mouth a tremendous workout. Languages like Mandarin use mouth parts that native English speakers rarely use.

Practicing pronunciation will not only improve your lifestyle, but is also helpful in stimulating brain function.

5. Ear Pinch Squats

Try ear pinch squats. I know it sounds wild, but you are incorporating movement and function in several muscle groups, and we know this has palpable benefits.

Think back to the idea of cross training. Try crossing your arms, pinching your ears, then go into a squat. You can build this practice by upping your squat reps, or holding the squat longer, like a chair pose in yoga.

Recently, I discovered a YouTube channel with even more routines like these called Eligned. Here’s one of my favorite workouts:

6. Eyes Closed Navigation Exercise

Want one of the most powerful cognitive training exercises for boosting spatial memory?

Not only that, but to extend your proprioception, which is your ability to sense where you’re body is located and how it is moving through space?

Choose a familiar, unobstructed area, ideally a hallway, wide open room or even a stretch of your backyar.

Then, close your eyes and carefully walk through the area, using your memory and body awareness to guide your movements.

7. The Blind Key Exercise

You can increase the challenge of navigating space without vision by getting out your keys after walking up to a door.

Identifying the key that you need by feel. Without looking, put the key into the keyhole, unlock the door, opening it and step inside.

You’ll find your spatial recognition and your other senses will be in a heightened sense of awareness, all by removing sight from the equation.

8. Eyes Closed Showering

Stepping into a hot shower create a naturally diffuse in mental environment – one that encourages spontaneous thought and idea generation.

This is why so many people say that their best ideas come in the shower. Your mind is free to wander.  

I find that it also boosts my concentration, especially when I rotate between hot and cold temperatures.

Although I can’t see the faucets with my eyes closed, I can feel them in my hands. It’s a tremendously sensory exercise that gets the brain hopping.

9. Eat with Your Eyes Closed

Most of us eat on autopilot.

Not me.

Even though it drives my wife crazy, I chew for an extended period with my eyes closed during each meal.

By removing the visual input, even just for a few moments per meal, I am heightening my sensory perception of the moment.

You can do the same by closing your eyes and focusing on:

• Kinesthetic experiences (the physical feeling of food in your mouth, the muscles of your lips and tongue working together, the movement and sensations of your teeth)
• Auditory experiences (the sounds of eating and drinking for both yourself and others around you)
• Imagined visual experiences (what foods look like in your minds eye )
• Emotional experiences (really burrow into how your dining experience makes you feel)
• Conceptual experiences (what can you think about as you eat, ranging from the origins of the food culturally to ideas you have about diet)
• Olfactory experiences (the smells you detect as you eat, perhaps made more interesting as you use your focused attention to think about the smells of other foods, such as imagining the smell of cinnamon while you’re eating a lemon)
• Gustatory experience (obviously, you will experience taste, but how deep into it can you go?)
• Spatial experiences (how wide/thick is the foot you’re eating? How dense?)

Finally, eating foods that are new to you can provide tons of excitement that lights up your brain. You can practice eating with your eyes closed too.

In fact, you can turn this into a game with your friends and family. Have everyone place a dish under a cover and then challenge each other to identify the food my smell and taste alone.

10. Take Different Routes Regularly

Instead of walking or driving the same route every day, break the pattern.

It doesn’t have to involve a major editing.

Try circling a mailbox or street sign to break up the pattern.

The reason little variations in your routine light up your brain is that your neurochemistry responds to novelty.

As this study shows, providing your brain with more novelty can help you control other parts of your brain better.

For example, if you have anger issues, you could wind up controlling your amygdala with greater ease, calming yourself down.

Now that’s a walk worth taking.

11. Track Individual Instruments While Listening to Music

Choose a song you enjoy and practice isolating just one instrument.

Maybe you focus only on the bass guitar. Or the trombone in an orchestra.

One of my favorite instruments to practice tracking is the high-hat on the drums.

After practicing this level of focus through the entirety of a song, pick a different instrument and repeat the song.

You will strengthen your ability to discriminate between sounds and exercise your working memory along the way.

Think of this exercise like pleasure combined with mental resistance training.

12. Read Aloud at Different Speeds

You can easily exercise multiple senses at the same time.

By reading aloud you’ll exercise the brain areas of at least these skills:

• Speech
• Hearing
• Muscle movement
• Memory

Work at slowing down and really focusing on articulation and pacing.

To push the challenge, study the techniques of auctioneers, rappers and actors. Their rapid-fire delivery styles can all be modeled.

Plus, they’re fun to emulate.

13. Cover the Metronome

This neurobic exercise is simple but powerful:

Set up a metronome and then train your timing, focus and coordination.

Here’s how:

• Set your metronome to a moderate tempo
• Try and clap or snap exactly on the beat, so precisely that your sound “covers” the metronome’s click
• Vary the tempo from slow to fast for more challenge.

This brain exercise can be hard to understand, so please check out this video for a demonstration:

14. Number Skipping

This exercise is my favorite.

Find a seated position that’s comfortable but not sleep-inducing.

Then begin to count your breaths from 1 to 10, linking each number to both the inhale and exhale:

• Inhale: “one”
• Exhale: “one”
• Inhale: “two”
• Exhale: “two”
• … and so on.

Now here’s where it gets interesting:

Try suppressing the even numbers.

Inhale and exhale while silently thinking “one.”

Then take your second breath… but resist thinking “two.”

Suppress the count completely. No inner voice, no whisper, just breath.

Allow yourself to count “three” on the next cycle, then suppress “four,” and so on until you reach a silent “ten.”

Once you’ve made it to the top during this neurobic exercise, come back down, but this time, suppress the odd numbers.

At first, your mind will rebel.

It will try to “sneak in” the suppressed numbers.

Or you’ll notice yourself thinking them reflexively.

That’s the point. This practice trains you to become the observer of your thoughts, to witness how your mind generates, clings to, and resists ideas.

It’s a classic form of cognitive negation. Much like the hypnotist’s challenge not to think of a red cat, trying not to think of something reveals just how the mind works behind the scenes.

This isn’t just breathwork paired with counting.

It’s advanced mental flexibility training, and one of the most profound neurobic tools you can use to strengthen memory, attention, and metacognitive control.

Your Next Steps with Neurobic Exercise

Now that you have a bunch of exercises, start small.

Pick just a few and commit to practicing them daily for a week.

That’s all you need to start rewiring your brain.

As with all exercises, consistency is the key to getting benefits.

And if you want help with taking your mental fitness even further, join my free memory improvement course:

Inside, you’ll get:

• 4 step-by-step video tutorials
• 3 printable worksheets
• A complete blueprint for building memory palaces that give your memory a tremendous workout any time you want it.

Because better memory?

It doesn’t require magic. But it does require method.

And learning the best method all begins with one decision:

To train your brain on purpose.

Thanks for being here today to learn these exercises and I can’t wait to hear what they’ve done for you.